JUNEAU – Today, fourteen Democratic members of the Alaska Legislature called on the Obama Administration to resolve permit issues that are delaying ConocoPhillips’ efforts to develop a new oil field in the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPR-A). Last year, the Army Corps of Engineers rejected Conoco’s permit application to build a bridge across the Coleville River that the company needs to access the new field just west of its Alpine oil field, the third largest in Alaska.

The House Fisheries Committee passed a bill last night to protect Alaskans’ access to their favorite fishing spots. Other states have lost public fishing stream access, forcing people to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to fish stretches if prime water.

“The tie that binds more Alaskans than almost any other is that we fish—sometimes really closely together, sometimes in solitude. But we enjoy our fishing in Alaska.”

The political ads are starting. And when political ads begin, you start to wonder whether telling a fib is cheaper than telling the truth. Well, because political ads cost lots of money, and they tend to be more fib than truth. So, fibbing must be cheaper, right? Or, maybe in politics it’s just more effective to mislead people. Nah. No one would ever to that with a political ad.

JUNEAU – Representatives Les Gara and Chris Tuck (both D-Anchorage), and Representative Scott Kawasaki (D-Fairbanks) made the case for increasing early childhood development efforts in Alaska. The representatives highlighted the economic returns of preschool education to Alaskan children, their families, and to the state as a whole, and they offered specific solutions for how Alaska can start realizing those benefits.